More and more Internet connections are being filtered, from public Wi-Fi and workplace connection filtering to ISP and country-level censorship. However, there are still ways to get around this filtering and view blocked websites.

Not only is Adobe Photoshop a powerful hands-on image editing tool, it’s a very powerful hands-off image editing tool. Read on as we show you how to automate repetitive and routine tasks so you can spend your time more creatively, rather than cropping, correcting, and otherwise clicking.

If you’ve heard one thing about Windows 8.1, you’ve probably heard Microsoft is bringing back the Start button. Windows 8.1 includes many features that should have been included with Windows 8, and it can feel much less awkward on a desktop PC.

One of the biggest changes in Windows 8.1 is SkyDrive integration. In Windows 8, SkyDrive was available as a Modern app and a desktop app that you could install. In Windows 8.1, SkyDrive is integrated at the system level.

The Windows Device Manager is an important troubleshooting tool. It displays all your installed hardware devices and allows you to view which ones have problems, manage their drivers, and even disable specific pieces of hardware.

Brute-force attacks are fairly simple to understand, but difficult to protect against. Encryption is math, and as computers become faster at math, they become faster at trying all the solutions and seeing which one fits.

Do you have your PC, television, or other expensive electronics plugged directly into a power outlet? You shouldn’t. You should plug your gadgets into a surge protector, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as a power strip.

If you live in an apartment complex you’ve probably noticed more than just the passive-aggressive network IDs that your neighbors use—very likely you’ve had problems with your wireless connections dropping out, or just not being as fast as you’d like. Here’s a quick fix.

Stores like Best Buy will charge you $49.99 to “optimize” and “tune up” your PC — either in-store or online. These services are generally a complete waste of money — you can easily do this all yourself for free.

The automatic white balance in digital cameras is, in most cases, a close-enough-but-not-quite solution. Read on as we show you how to use a white balance cap (both commercial and DIY) to achieve perfectly balanced color.

Scanning documents and OCRing them once meant slowly feeding them through a desktop scanner before running slow, clunky OCR software. With the advent of powerful smartphones, you can now quickly scan and OCR documents with your phone’s camera.

When it comes to hidden gems in Windows, nothing beats the Reliability monitor tool, hidden behind a link inside of another tool that you don’t use either. Why Microsoft doesn’t shine more light on this really useful troubleshooting tool, we’ll never know.

Recent revelations about government surveillance have raised the question: why don’t cloud services encrypt your data? Well, they generally do encrypt your data, but they have the key so they can decrypt it any time they like.

Your smartphone needs a recharge yet again and you’re miles from the charger at home; that public charging kiosk is looking pretty promising–just plug your phone in and get the sweet, sweet, energy you crave. What could possible go wrong, right? Thanks to common traits in cellphone hardware and software design, quite a few things–read on to learn more about juice jacking and how to avoid it.

So you have multiple computers and you want to keep your files in sync, but you don’t want to store them on someone else’s servers. You’ll want a service that synchronizes files directly between your computers.

One of the big new features in Apple’s iOS 7 is Control Center, which allows you to quickly access and toggle common setting from anywhere. However, Android phones have had quick toggles for a long time.

Google Play is full of task managers for Android. These utilities can show you apps running in the background, kill running apps, and otherwise manage your apps — but you don’t need to install any third-party software to do this.

If you’re using a password manager and it’s not the cloud-based LastPass, it’s probably KeePass. KeePass is a completely open-source password manager that stores all your sensitive data locally. However, this means that it isn’t quite as well-integrated as other solutions.

It’s a common situation — you have several computers near each other and you want to transfer files between them. You don’t have to pull out a USB drive, nor do you have to send them over email — there are faster, easier ways.

Many programs want to send usage statistics, error logs, and crash reports — data about how you use the application and what problems occurred — to their servers. Some people disable these options, but should you?

Android doesn’t come with a “find my Android” feature, so there’s no official way to track your phone if you lose it. You should prepare your phone for loss by setting up such a tracking app — but what if you didn’t?

Last week we told you all about camera white balance and how to fix color issues right in your camera. But what about the photos you’ve already taken that need a little help? Read on as we show you how to fix color issues in existing photos.